AI-based solutions offer huge benefits for HR leaders as they seek to deliver high-value services with a limited budget, but HR leaders need to understand (now rather than later) where AI matters most so they can prepare for and take advantage of this rapidly evolving range of technologies. "HR leaders need to reimagine their HR processes and identify ways to mitigate inefficiencies and unlock opportunities for more business-value," says Seyda Berger-Böcker, Director Analyst, Gartner. "When deciding on HR process improvement initiatives, HR leaders must make AI-based solutions a central pillar to look at." HR leaders who embrace AI-based solutions can drive their function's journey toward more operational efficiency The most promising use cases for adopting AI-based solutions are in recruiting, skills management, and learning and development (L&D). Processes in these areas involve a high volume of time-consuming tasks that are still operated by human labor, rely on unstructured data that requires significant HR capacity to analyze, and involve complex decisions that are driven primarily by human judgment or intuition and have some degree of bias.

With the introduction of new technology, skill in the workplace is significant and since the fourth industrial revolution, adoption of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) marks an acceleration over the shifts of even the recent past. The requirement of skills, for instance, technological, social and emotional skills which are in demand as well as physical and manual skills, will drop at the modern workplace. These changes will require employees to develop their existing skill sets to the expected level or acquire new ones. Companies need to think how work is organised within their organisations with the latest technological changes. How do workforce skills change with automation?

The average worker of the future is a socially adept leader, entrepreneur, and life-long learner with transferrable technology skills, who is also happy to work in a team, suggests a new McKinsey report. Chris Middleton looks at whether organisations can really find such people. Reports about the growing IT skills gap in digitally enhanced organisations have been circulating for as long as the internet has existed as a business tool, suggesting that the supposed urgency of fixing the problem has not been an impediment to many successful organisations. However, a new report from management consultancy McKinsey suggests that the rapid introduction of automation and artificial intelligence systems within companies is changing the very nature of work itself, as technologies increasingly augment some human skills, and replace others completely. Over the next decade, this will force companies to reconsider how work is organised internally.

Demand for technological, social and emotional, and higher cognitive skills will rise by 2030. How will workers and organizations adapt? Skill shifts have accompanied the introduction of new technologies in the workplace since at least the Industrial Revolution, but adoption of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) will mark an acceleration over the shifts of even the recent past. The need for some skills, such as technological as well as social and emotional skills, will rise, even as the demand for others, including physical and manual skills, will fall. These changes will require workers everywhere to deepen their existing skill sets or acquire new ones. Companies, too, will need to rethink how work is organized within their organizations.